royal holloway commute help!!

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There are paper-based National Rail tickets, but recently the contactless zone expanded to include Egham. So you CAN use a contactless card to exit and/or enter Egham station! However, I don't think there's a way to add your railcard to contactless payments

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I'm not too sure how it works with tickets bought online/the app for South Western Railway, but if you're buying a paper ticket at a machine, there should be a button (sometimes not so easy to spot) that says 'add railcard'. You press that button and then choose the relevant railcard, then press the button to confirm you have that railcard. If you're buying from someone at the station, you just show them your card, either on the app or a physical card!

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If you're using your TfL student Oyster card to travel towards Egham on the train, you would need to tap in wherever you get on, and then get OFF the train at Feltham (which is the end of Zone 6), tap out on your Oyster, and then re-enter the station with your discounted (with railcard) extension ticket towards Egham and get on the next train to Egham. That could get a bit tedious and tricky if there are train delays, etc. in terms of timing things to get to uni on time. My personal recommendation (if you can afford it) would be to not use your student Oyster for any train journeys to Egham and to just buy a discounted ticket using a railcard for your whole train journey - to avoid the whole tapping out/in at Feltham scenario. You can buy individual tickets each day, or there should be options to buy tickets valid for longer (either a week, a month, or a whole year!)